


does it make you feel better to know you got the best of me?

by nuricurry



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Introspective Daddy Issues, Spoilers for DMC5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 09:35:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18118130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nuricurry/pseuds/nuricurry
Summary: When they separate meInto being storedWith all the recessed genesThat are left ignoredNero hadn't grown up with much, and so he learned to keep his expectations low, and be grateful for whatever he had.Then people had to keep showing up, and become important to him, and make him start to want things.





	does it make you feel better to know you got the best of me?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gravy_tape](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gravy_tape/gifts).



> Spoilers for Devil May Cry 5. A sort of disjointed exploration of Nero's relationships.

Nero grew up without much. The Order had always provided him with whatever he needed...sort of. He was housed and fed and given clothes, but that was basically it. Anything he had was either earned or only given because he needed it to serve the Order, which was fine for him because he had never really been someone who desired much. At least, not material things. Other things… Well, he learned to keep his expectations low, and be grateful for whatever he had.

That’s why he was so goddamn protective of the Devil May Cry sign, and the van it was attached to. He had saved for over a year to buy that car that was on its last legs, and the minute he did, he called Dante up with his idea of a mobile demon hunting company. He needed money to look after himself, and Kyrie and the three kids they were fostering, and he was hoping that Dante would be willing to help him out. He did him one better, and let him use his agency’s reputation, which was pretty decent of him, even if Dante gave him shit about not having a driver’s license at the same time.

The inside of Nico’s van (that was technically his van, but she had long since claimed it) was cramped, littered with trashy knick knacks, and in a perpetual state of smelling like the grease pit of a taco joint. But, what was important was that Nero had never felt uncomfortable while he was in it. Well, sometimes, physically, he was uncomfortable, because the springs in the passenger seat were shot, and Nico drove like she was purposefully trying to grind his face against the sides of buildings-- she never denied it when he made such accusations, by the way-- but emotionally? Nico’s van was pretty nice. It had her shitty backwater music on the jukebox, a mini-fridge filled with energy drinks and whiskey, and Nico kept a sleeve of fast food french fries on hand in the cupholder. It was a pretty sweet setup, and if he was honest, it suited Nero’s tastes perfectly. If it was less of a mess, he might feel guilty about bleeding on the upholstery, and throwing up out of the side window after Nico did another aerial roll off a drawbridge.

V, on the other hand, looked completely out of place sitting on Nico’s bench seat.

To be fair, he didn’t exactly present himself as someone who Nero would label as particularly ‘high-class’; he sure dressed like someone who smoked weed in the back of someone’s van-- but like, only at music festivals-- and he was not above cracking a weird fisting joke when Nero had to give Nico the measurements of his amputated arm for her Devil Breakers. But, V was also someone who was well read, and probably bought groceries at organic vegan markets. He had the posture of someone who was used to walking around without worrying about how he was going to buy his next meal, and he talked with the vernacular of a man at least twenty years older than all of them, and one who probably had a beach house, and a cabin up in the mountains. When V sat in Nico’s smoke-stained van, he looked as if he probably wanted to be literally anywhere else, and Nero couldn’t exactly judge him for that.

But still, he wasn’t about to go let V talk shit about Nico’s shitty van if such a thought ever crossed his mind.

V was… a lot. Like, ‘ _a lot_ ’ in the way that Nico was a lot. V didn’t run his mouth, or blow smoke rings in his face, or make a lot of obscene and increasingly detailed references to masturbation like Nico did, but he was still a handful to deal with.

V quoted a lot of poetry. V made a lot of little comments that Nero never quite knew if he should be flattered or insulted by (how was he supposed to take _“Your quick return after having your arm ripped off is...surprisingly impressive,”_ especially when it was said while giving him a slow look over?). V sorta smelled like patchouli and incense and wore fucking Birkenstocks while slapping around demons. V was just a lot to take in, and even more to try to figure out. Nero figured that he was probably just wasting brain cells hoping that he’d ever piece together anything when it came to V.

Not that he didn’t try. And it seemed that V liked his efforts. At the very least, he didn’t try to stop him.

“Okay, so, your dad was a Lit professor at one of those fancy private colleges or something, right?” Nero guessed while fishing out a small screwdriver he kept in his jacket pocket in order to tighten up the bolts of his Devil Breaker. Anything that kept him out of Nico’s van for minor repairs.

V just smiled in that weird, cryptic, self-satisfied way he always did. “No.”

“Your mom then? Was that kinda sexist of me?”

That made V outright laugh, the sound rough, and in a way, almost reminiscent of the pitch and cadence of Griffon when he was mocking Nero. “No. Probably. I’m likely not the one who you should ask.”

“God, don’t tell Nico I said that,” he asked, with an exaggerated sigh and roll of his eyes, “She’ll twist my words around, and then they’ll get back to Kyrie, and then it’ll be a whole mess.”

V enigmatically hummed, seemingly thoughtful, and Nero wondered if he was going to tell Nico anyway, just to be disobliging. “Sounds...difficult.”

“It’s not really,” Nero disagreed, and meant it.

The hardest part was knowing that Kyrie deserved better.

Actually, that was a lie. The hardest part was knowing Kyrie deserved better but also not even having an idea of what that ‘better’ could possibly be. He knew that their current situation wasn’t exactly the best, but it was beyond anything Nero had ever considered possible for himself. He grew up being pretty sure the most he could hope for out of life was not ending up on the Order’s shitlist for being a freak with a demon arm. Having a real house, even if it was a run-down two bedroom with just one bathroom shared between six people, was like something out of a dream for him. He had a job that paid the bills (not always on time, but they got paid), and he was able to keep some kids from growing up the way he did, without any real support or help, left to fend for themselves and hope they made it out alive in the end. Kyrie was with him through all of that, and he was really happy she was.

But, he knew that her life wasn’t as it should be. Kyrie deserved something other than leaky pipes in the kitchen, and a shower that only stayed hot for four minutes at a time. She deserved better meals than mac and cheese with cut up hotdogs, and she should be wearing nicer clothes, ones that weren’t fished out of the bargain bucket at the local thrift store. Nero knew those things, but he also didn’t know what could possibly be the next level beyond what they had now, and it frustrated him and made him feel pathetic and helpless and stupid. People normally had grander expectations than that, didn’t they? They probably dreamed up huge mansions filled with fancy clothes and expensive furniture, and servants to take care of all of it. So why didn’t he?

The whole fostering kids and being a demon hunter thing wasn’t even Kyrie’s idea, yet she was stuck with the consequences. Man, he really fucked up when it came to looking after her. Sorry Credo.

And that didn’t even take into account the whole part where he got his arm ripped off and Kyrie had to use her one nice towel to try and staunch the flow of blood on the way to the hospital. He still felt really bad about that. Almost as bad as he felt when he remembered the fear he saw in her eyes, as she held onto his bloodied arm with one hand, and the back of the passenger seat with the other, as Nico took sharp turns and jumped curbs in her frenzied attempt to get Nero to help before he could bleed out. Kyrie hadn’t cried, but he knew she probably wanted to. She was just in too much shock and trying to keep him from losing his own mind, which was awfully nice of her. He could buy her an entire closet of brand new towels and never repay her for what she did for him that day.

“You’ll be okay Nero, I know you will,” she assured him, even as he grit his teeth, and blinked away dark spots in his vision that warned him of his incoming lack of consciousness, “You’re going to get through this, Nero.”

“--my fucking _arm_ , Kyrie…!” he remembered hissing at her, not because any of this was her fault, but because he had nowhere else to direct that anger.

To her endless credit, Kyrie took it in stride. “I know. But I’m just glad that you’re still alive.”

She always seemed to know exactly what to say, to get him back on track.

Unlike Dante. Dante was the exact opposite-- he seemed to know the exact words that would completely throw Nero off balance and put him in the position of being really pissed off, unable to think of much else. He didn’t always do it on purpose, but there were those times that he did, and it threw a wrench into everything Nero had going on in his life because Dante decided to show up, and start being difficult.

He owed a lot to Dante, and maybe that was why he didn’t immediately try to cut him out of his life after what happened with the Order. Dante did save his life, and he did help Nero out, and give him some good advice in terms of how to use his powers the right way, and what he should be doing with them, now that the Order was gone and he needed a way to put food on the table. Dante even gave Nero the sign for Nico’s van, and he let him use the company name, called him a ‘collaborative partner’, and sent jobs his way.

But, Dante also seemed pretty determined to keep their relationship as 'business casual' as possible. He never really answered Nero’s calls, and only ever called him back if Nero was asking about work.

(He said it was because his phone lines got cut off a lot, but Nero had no problem getting in touch with Trish or Lady, so he knew that Dante pulled that excuse out of his ass)

When they did speak, Nero’s attempts at small talk were rebuffed with crude jokes or dismissive grunts-- even a simple _‘how’s life treating you?’_ was dodged with a sudden mention of some errand to run, followed by the sound of a dial tone after Dante hung up. Kyrie, who Nero had never known anyone to push aside, was also included in this weird barrier that Dante put up. Whenever she happened to see him, if he stopped by the garage, or when she answered the phone when he called, she eagerly offered for Dante to join them for dinner. More often than not, Dante declined, though there was once or twice when Kyrie’s badgering got him to agree.

But, Dante never showed up, and never apologized, or explained his absence. It was one thing to blow off Nero, but it was another to lie to Kyrie, and so he told her to stop trying because Nero decided he wasn’t going to try either. It just wasn’t worth it, if Dante wasn’t going to reciprocate.

He always sort of knew that he was an idiot, and a hypocrite, but the situation with Dante only proved it, because even though he said that to Kyrie, Nero couldn’t stop trying himself. Even though he wanted to, even though it would hurt him less to just give up on ever having some kind of relationship with Dante. He kept trying because damn it, Dante was one of the few people who seemed to understand whatever weird shit was going on with him, and it’d be really nice to have someone like that around.

Too bad Dante didn’t seem to agree.

“Try not to take it too personally,” Lady had advised him once, after watching him slam down the pay phone because Dante had bailed out on him again and refused to answer his calls.

Kinda hard to do that, when it seemed pretty obvious that it was Nero, personally, that Dante was going out of his way to avoid.

There was a part of Nero that hoped that maybe Dante was just bad with people.

“He is absolutely terrible when it comes to people,” Trish had enthusiastically confirmed that suspicion for him when he brought it up during a job she was helping him on. “One of the worst. The man wouldn’t know tact if someone tattooed the definition on the inside of his eyelids.”

A bit dramatic, but it certainly painted a picture. Dante wasn’t good with people, and Nero could sympathize with him a bit. He wasn’t the best himself, and really, had only gotten better at it in the past few years. He had spent the majority of his life interacting with just a few people on a regular basis, and even then, it was never on any sort of casual or friendly terms. The only exceptions had ever been Kyrie and to an extent Credo. He remembered how he was when he first met Dante-- pretty difficult, bordering on being a straight-up dick-- and he supposed he couldn’t judge him too harshly, when he only recently learned to be better.

Hanging out with a bunch of kids had really helped with that.

Julio was the oldest of the kids he and Kyrie took in, and that meant that he was usually the one talking back. He grew up in the orphanage, and he had ended up pretty stubborn because of that. He had to get tough in order to survive, he had been let down by plenty of authority figures before, which combined made him difficult to deal with at times. Nero absolutely saw himself in Julio. Which, ironically, ended up with them being at each other’s throats quite a few times when he and Kyrie first took him in.

They fought over things that, when looked at through the eyes of an adult, seemed stupid, but when seen by a kid, were practically the end of the world. They fought over Julio having to share a room with ‘babies’, even though he was only a few years older than Kyle and Carlo, they fought over him wanting expensive toys and games that Nero and Kyrie just couldn’t afford, they fought over him not finishing his dinner because he was sick and tired of beans and rice. Julio ran his mouth and picked up a lot of Nero’s swearing, and always used both when he wanted to push buttons. The first year was spent shouting and slamming doors, and Nero had several dark days where he considered throwing a seven-year-old off a cliff and into Fortuna’s bay.

“I heard a lot of the other adults don’t want to look after Julio,” Kyrie confided in him one night, while the two of them stood in the kitchen washing dishes. Nero was scrubbing, both his hands submerged in the soapy water, while Kyrie dried them off, since she had a more careful, delicate touch. “They think he’s too difficult. He got passed around a lot before he came to stay with us.”

It wasn’t really a subtle hint, but that was in Nero’s favor; if Kyrie had tried to be obtuse, he probably wouldn’t have gotten the message. He didn’t reply, but he did think about what she said, throughout the rest of the dishes, and later on that night, as he and Kyrie changed for bed. She, as always, fell asleep quickly, while he stayed up for hours, staring at the ceiling and listening to the gentle tempo of her breathing. His mind was filled with thoughts of Julio, of outbursts of temper, and a lack of trust.

At some point, the image of Julio in his head morphed into an image of himself, and Nero tasted a lifetime of bitterness and solitude filling his mouth.

The shift wasn’t instant, and it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t something that was done over the course of a single night. Nero still had to learn how to be patient, and Julio still had to learn how to trust him, and recognize his authority. But, when he gave Julio his old headphones, it got better, and when he invited him to join him in tinkering in the garage, Julio eagerly accepted. They started to finally get along, and Nero finally started feeling like he was growing up, and maybe becoming the sort of person he used to want to be, the sort of person he once looked up to.

Being with Julio didn’t just make him think of himself; it also made him think of Credo.

Credo was a lot of things. He was a ball-buster, and never hesitant to take Nero down a peg or two if he ever got too arrogant about himself. But, he was also one of the few people in Nero’s life that ever bothered to give a shit about him as a person. Maybe some of that was because of Kyrie, but Credo also stuck out his neck quite a few times for Nero’s sake. How many times had he covered for him in the Order? When Nero needed someone to train him, it was always Credo who offered to take on the responsibility. He was hard on him, and Nero hadn’t always seen eye to eye with him, but Credo had saved his life, and he still thought of him as someone important, a person who had shaped who he was, and held a unique role in his life.

There was a lot of similarities between Credo and V in that respect.

He could still remember how V had stopped him when Nero nearly charged headfirst back into the fight with Urizen. V looked so weak, his body thin, face sallow, but the strength that he used to hold Nero back was undeniable.

“Think of how to get stronger,” he advised him, in that calm, decisive tone. V never seemed to be afraid, never expressed anything but apathetic confidence, and Nero both envied and admired that aspect of him. His way of talking to Nero was so different from how Dante spoke to him-- Dante pushed him away, knocked him down, berated him and disregarded him-- and so maybe that was why he responded more to the things V said. V didn’t say he was weak, only that he had to find a way to be stronger still, in order to stand a chance against Urizen. V didn’t send him away, and call him that one word that always served to get his blood boiling: _‘dead weight’_. V talked to him like he was worth something, like he actually had something to be proud of, and though he usually dressed it up in between cryptic poems and plenty of sarcasm, it was still more than Nero had ever gotten from anyone else. He really needed it, and V seemed willing enough to offer it.

God, he should have guessed the truth sooner.

The first thing he remembered after losing his arm was the pain. A lot of it, practically unbearable amounts, enough to nearly knock him out again, just from the shock of it assaulting his system all at once. After the demon attack that changed his arm, he had gotten used to it feeling strange and weird. His right arm always felt warm, and it outright burned whenever he was around anything demonic. It was like there was a constant itch beneath his skin, along with the words that were an ever-present whisper inside his head. His right arm had never really felt ‘normal’, but he was used to that. He’d grown accustomed to it.

Therefore, it was really disorienting to feel absolutely none of that anymore, replaced instead by the hot, boiling, thrumming ache of pain.

The second thing he remembered after losing his arm was the sight of some stranger in a leather duster that smelled like cheap incense looming over him. He wanted to react much more aggressively than he did, but it turned out blood loss and shock really fucked a person up, and the most he could do was half roll himself onto his side, and hoarsely ask that the stranger give him a name, and explain why he was in Nero’s hospital room.

“It’s V,” he coolly complied with Nero’s demands, even though they both knew he didn’t have to, and Nero couldn’t do anything to force him, “and I came because I need your help.”

Looking back, it was strange how that one single sentence had somehow been everything Nero needed to hear, in that exact moment.

V’s words were like some sort of spell that soothed the aching and the emptiness. His voice was soft, cool and collected, and Nero found himself wanting to just hear him talk more, no matter what he said. Something about V’s voice made him feel calm, made him feel better, even in his lowest moment, which Nero had only ever really experienced with Kyrie. And, somehow, V’s calming presence was even more potent than Kyrie’s, which Nero could hardly believe. He didn’t know who V was, he’d only met him minutes before, but immediately he was willing to trust him, because he needed to, for the sake of his sanity.

Lying in a hospital bed, feeling like shit, suffering from a pretty jarring case of phantom limb, Nero was in the worst pain of his life. It was physical, but it was also emotional because, for as much as it pained him to have a limb severed from his body, it hurt his pride a lot more to realize that he had been stupid enough for a demon to get the jump on him like that. He let some monster into his house, into the place where Kyrie and the kids were supposed to be safe-- where he was supposed to keep them safe. He was stupid, and it cost him a lot more than his arm.

It cost him his own self respect.

V, ever pragmatic, had stomped on Nero’s misery with a reminder of his priorities. “Are you going to lie there feeling sorry for yourself, or are you going to do something about losing your arm?” Considering the fact that Nero had just gotten out of a week-long coma, another might consider the comment a little tone-deaf, and Nero, at first, wasn’t much different.

“Do what, exactly?” he snapped irritably, and as he shifted his arm to present what remained of it to V, his voice was dark and bitter, “It’s not like I’m gonna get the damn thing back.”

“No,” V agreed, and the large bird that lingered on his shoulder snickered under its breath, “But I had no idea that the only thing worthwhile about you was your arm. I would think that Dante wouldn’t outsource his beloved name to someone with so little to offer.”

Instinctively, Nero’s body surged forward. The stub of his right arm had extended out, and if he had the rest, he would have grabbed V by the front of his clothes. But, since he didn’t, at the last second, Nero improvised, by headbutting V hard in the nose. He watched in satisfaction as blood gushed from V’s nostrils, and dripped down his face, but rather than seem put off by the reaction, V only began to laugh.

“That’s what I thought.”

Unconventional, and a bit risky, but V’s words worked their charm; for Nero, it was much-needed encouragement.

That was what he imagined he would miss most about V. His freely given praise, his vote of confidence in whatever Nero did...his approval. He had always thought that he was above needing others to validate him, that as long as he felt confident and proud of himself, he wouldn’t need anything else. Then V had to come around, and start giving those things so easily, things he had tried to find in Credo, and Dante, and never really got, not like he wanted.

He’d never known his father, and for the most part, he thought he never really wanted to. At least, not until he came dressed up like some guy his age, some quiet, intelligent, dryly sarcastic man who handed out the words he never knew he needed as easily as he quoted William Blake.

It was a strange feeling, one he didn’t really have the words to explain, but in a way, Nero felt like his father had died when V reunited himself with Urizen, rather than simply been reborn. It was like Vergil had killed his father, and maybe, to some extent, he had.

All he had now was his book to remember him by.


End file.
